News, articles and information about Jewish art, architecture, and historic sites. This blog includes material to be posted on the website of the International Survey of Jewish Monuments (www.isjm.org).

Tykocin, Poland. Synagogue. Decorated Ark (the ark now is provided with a parochet (curtain), but still not steps). Photo:K. Bielawski (Virtual Shtetl)

I remember vividly when I first visited the synagogue in 1990. After traveling for many days across the Polish countryside looking at ruined synagogues, it was a revelation to visit Tykocin, where the building was reasonably well restored, and promoted as a tourist and educational site. It made clear at that time "the art of the possible," that Poland already had most of the tools in place to protect, preserve and present other similarly important Jewish sites. All that was lacking was better interpretive material about Jews, Judaism and Jewish history, all of which has since been developed as foreign and Polish scholars and students have delved deeply into rediscovering and interpreting the Jewish past. This year, much of that work comes to a head in the opening of the new Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. But a beautiful modern museum with high-tech installations needs to connect to some authenticity of place - and visits to monuments like Tykocin (and Zamosc and many others places) are perfect complements to musuem visits.

The Tykocin synagogue was among the very first Jewish sites restored in Poland. The work of the 1970s and '80s pre-dates the fall of Communism, and set a high standard for subsequent Jewish heritage preservation work that began in the 1990s and continues today. The synagogue is part of the district museum in Bialystok and houses a permanent exhibition of Judaica and the place of the synagogue in the town, but it is the impressive architecture of the building and the many restored inscription painted on the massive walls that are the real attraction of the site. The ark is surrounded by painted carving and the inner walls and central four-pillar bimah bear paintings of prayers, texts and other decorative elements.The Tykocin synagogue is an excellent example of an important synagogue type that appears in Poland in
the late sixteenth century and is;

"defined by its square or almost square plan and the presence
of a large central bimah, surrounded by four corner columns or piers
that rise to the ceiling vault, which they help support. Known to
scholars as the “bimah-support synagogue,” or the “nine-bay
plan, this type allowed for wider roof spans and larger uninterrupted
interior spaces, to better accommodate large crowds. The size of
the space, and the attention given to the reader’s platform,
created a new dramatic effect. The first such synagogue may have
been the MaHaRSHal Synagogue, built in Lublin, Poland in 1567, and
rebuilt 1656.

Many examples of this type can be found in Eastern
Poland and Western Ukraine. Some survive in Poland at Przemysl(1592-95), Zamosc, (c. 1600), Tykocin, (1642)
and Lancut (1761), and in Ukraine in Satanov (18th century), Zhovkva (1692) and elsewhere."

For many years it has seemed that Tykocin will be the only example in modern Poland of the massive bimah-support type of synagogue. Now, however, plans are getting going for the preservation and restoration of the great synagogue of Przysucha. In ten years we may have another "New Wonder."

There are many aspects of the Tykocin synagogue that are worthy of note (and further study). Its position in the Jewish quarter, and that relationship to the main square and the big church; the associated buildings around the synagogue perimeter; the notable tower - said to have been used as a jail for Jewish offenders; and the remarkable decorated ark made of stone, stucco and paint - that would have had wooden elements, too. The painted drapery made-to-appear behind the ark is a good example of an old tradition where the ark is given dramatic - and even royal treatment. Click here for more discussion about painted ark curtains.

No comments:

Search This Blog

Follow by Email

Welcome

This blog provides news and opinion articles about Jewish art, architecture and historic sites - especially those where something new is happening. Developed in connection with news gathering for the International Survey of Jewish Monuments website (www.isjm.org), this blog highlights some of the most interesting Jewish sites around the world, and the most pressing issues affecting them.